May 1, 2023, 11:51 p.m. ET
Stella Bugbee
Thanks for joining the Styles desk for another Met Gala. We’ve enjoyed every minute of bringing you updates from this annual circus. We’re not as dead as that co*ckroach, but almost. Tomorrow we’ll have dispatches from the parties (where there will likely be more outfit changes and misdeeds). And stay tuned for our official Most Styles-ish list, coming shortly. Good night, and see you next year.
May 1, 2023, 11:32 p.m. ET
Gina Cherelus and Anna Grace Lee
The Met Gala’s second-to-last guest was not who you might imagine.
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There was an uninvited guest at Monday’s Met Gala, though one almost every New Yorker knows: a co*ckroach, which scurried across the carpet late in the evening, striking fear in the hearts of press and publicists alike and becoming a star in its own right.
Around 9:30 p.m., the insect was spotted zooming across the museum’s steps. Photographers and reporters, bored as they waited for Rihanna to arrive, rushed to take photos. The roach obliged — this was the Met Gala, after all — even stopping to pose for a few shots taken by the photographer Kevin Mazur.
Online commenters, energized by this twist on an ultra-choreographed night, took it as an opportunity to trot out jokes.
Some people asked which designer the roach was wearing and questioned whether it was Jared Leto in costume; Mr. Leto had appeared earlier in the evening as a cat. Others were surprised it had scored an invitation to the exclusive event.
“Where did this co*ckroach find 50k?,” tweeted one user, referring to the gala’s cost of attendance. “Interesting how a co*ckroach made it to the met and I didn’t,” another wrote.
Someone even demanded that it get the front-page treatment: “If this co*ckroach isn’t on the cover of the next issue of Vogue I will demand Anna Wintour’s resignation.”
Unfortunately the bug’s 15 minutes of fame was short-lived. Shortly after 10 p.m., Variety reported that the co*ckroach had been fatally stepped on.
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May 1, 2023, 11:31 p.m. ET
Alex Vadukul and Katie Van Syckle
Climate and housing demonstrators are arrested blocks from the Met Gala.
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A demonstration blocks from the Met Gala led to several arrests on Monday night, as climate activists dressed in bright red shirts, with plastic pitchforks as props, lay down in a street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The police declined to say how many people were taken into custody, though organizers said 15 had been arrested. As one activist was put into a police van, the assembled crowd chanted:
“We need clean air, not another billionaire!”
“What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!”
The protests were organized by the climate and housing groups New York Communities for Change and Reclaim Our Tomorrow, according to Wallace Mazon, an organizer on site.
One protester held a sign that read, “Invest in our N.Y. Reject Hochul’s Billionaire Budget,” referring to recent contentious New York state budget negotiations.
Mr. Mazon, who identified himself as a climate organizer for N.Y.C.C., said that the wealthy need to pay their fair share of taxes.
“The most powerful people are at the Met Gala, and while they’re in there celebrating in ridiculous outfits, there are New Yorkers who are in a housing crisis and with a lack of essential needs,” Mr. Mazon said.
“New Yorkers are suffering while they’re in there doing whatever it is that they’re doing. And the media gives them all the attention.”
Gina Cherelus contributed reporting.
May 1, 2023, 10:26 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa
Rihanna, asked how she’s feeling tonight in that Valentino gown, said, “good,” and “expensive.”
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May 1, 2023, 10:25 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa
Rihanna is wearing a white gown (with a mega train) and a hooded camellia cape. ASAP Rocky is wearing a plaid open skirt over bedazzled jeans — very Karl, with a black glove and white collared shirt.
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May 1, 2023, 10:15 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa
She’s here. At 10:15. Who? If you need to ask, you haven’t been paying close enough attention.
May 1, 2023, 10:04 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa
Still on the carpet, where the press has been waiting about an hour for the final guest (rumored to be Rihanna). We’re going a little stir crazy. This is what happened when a roach crawled on the carpet.
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May 1, 2023, 9:55 p.m. ET
Gina Cherelus
Brittney Griner makes herMet Gala debut.
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Brittney Griner, the W.N.B.A. star who was detained in Russia for nearly 10 months last year, made her Met Gala debut.
Ms. Griner, 32, a center for the Phoenix Mercury, wore custom Calvin Klein: a camel-colored suit with a sheer undershirt displaying her chest tattoo. Her wife, Cherelle Griner, wore a form-fitting cream-colored gown, also by Calvin Klein.
In February 2022, Ms. Griner was detained by customs officials at an airport near Moscow for carrying a small amount of marijuana concentrate in a vape cartridge in her luggage. In August, she was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony.
Her detention spurred widespread outrage and petitions for her to be returned to the United States, and she was released in December in a prisoner swap. Ms. Griner has expressedsupport for Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was recently detained in Russia and has been classified as a wrongful detainee by the U.S. government.
Ms. Griner, who is preparing to resume playing in the W.N.B.A, said she would not be going overseas to play basketball unless sheis representing in the Olympics.
May 1, 2023, 9:40 p.m. ET
Vanessa Friedman
Rihanna = Godot
May 1, 2023, 9:37 p.m. ET
Gina Cherelus
It’s that time of the night where many people online are asking where’s Rihanna.
May 1, 2023, 9:29 p.m. ET
Anna Grace Lee
Doja Cat goes full feline.
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While the real Choupette won’t be prowling the Met Gala carpet tonight, the stars came out in feline force to make up for her absence. Jared Leto went furry in a cat suit, while Doja Cat went a slightly more understated route, with an anthropomorphic cat look that married beauty, camp and glam.
For her Met Gala debut, Doja Cat paid homage to Choupette, Karl Lagerfeld’s beloved cat, in a silvery, beaded Oscar de la Renta gown with a cat-eared hood, a fluffy white train and a cat-face prosthetic.
Styled by Doja Cat’s creative director, Brett Alan Nelson, with makeup by Ernesto Casillas and claw nails by Saccia Livingston, Doja Cat wore a prosthetic facial piece sculpted and applied by Malina Stearns. Ms. Stearns, a special-effects makeup artist who lives in Los Angeles, said that she and Mr. Nelson first started planning the look about six months ago. To begin, she took a mold of Doja Cat’s face (a process in which Ms. Stearns “slimed her face in silicone,” she said) to sculpt a small foam latex prosthetic for the event.
“She wanted to be a cat herself, as like a humanoid kind of cat,” Ms. Stearns said. They did two full run-throughs with the prosthetic and it took about an hour to apply earlier on Monday.
“It’s a whole process,” she said with a laugh.
Compared with Doja Cat’s nearly five-hour-long transformation for Schiaparelli in January, it was almost certainly a breeze.
“I still wanted her beauty to shine through,” said Ms. Stearns, who has worked with Doja Cat before. “We just wanted to pay homage to her being the cat and still kind of keep it in a very beauty world.”
What do you do with a 3-D mold of Doja Cat’s face? Ms. Stearns said, “I’ll have that forever.”
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May 1, 2023, 9:01 p.m. ET
Nina Westervelt
From beads to anchors there’s a wide variety of statement headpieces on the red carpet.
May 1, 2023, 8:52 p.m. ET
Vanessa Friedman
Jeremy Pope’s cape with a Karl portrait on the back is practically the entire length of the Met stairs.
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May 1, 2023, 8:48 p.m. ET
Vanessa Friedman
Olivier Rousteing of Balmain is carrying a quilted bag scrawled with the words “Karl Who?” which I think Karl himself would have appreciated.
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May 1, 2023, 8:42 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa
Teyana Taylor's Thom Browne skirt is so tight that she hopped up each step of the stairs — the core strength!
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May 1, 2023, 8:41 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa
Aubrey Plaza just flipped off Stella McCartney but I think it was in a nice way! (She is wearing Stella McCartney.)
May 1, 2023, 8:35 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa
Viola Davis’s (presumably very expensive diamond) bracelet just fell off. “I’m not paying for it,” she joked.
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May 1, 2023, 8:33 p.m. ET
Vanessa Friedman
I appreciate Alton Mason as a bride.
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May 1, 2023, 8:25 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa
Janelle Monáe just did an outfit change on the carpet, stripping off a giant Thom Browne coat to reveal a hoop skirt underneath, and a sequin bikini underneath that. “It’s black and white and sex,” she said.
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May 1, 2023, 8:22 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa
This current sequence of carpet-walkers is giving strong New York in the mid-2000s: former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Paris Hilton, Marc Jacobs.
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May 1, 2023, 8:21 p.m. ET
Vanessa Friedman
Just when you thought we were having an understated Met Gala, Jared Leto, Lil Nas X and Kim K arrive, and it all goes out the window.
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May 1, 2023, 8:17 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa and Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet
Kim Kardashian’s pearls-and-not-much-else look is Schiaparelli. She arrived with her sisters, Kendall with towering boots and a towering collar, and Kylie in a red and blue one-armed gown. No sign of any other Kardashian-Jenners.
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May 1, 2023, 8:15 p.m. ET
Vanessa Friedman
More dressing geneology: Margot Robbie’s corset dress is Chanel couture 1993.
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May 1, 2023, 8:10 p.m. ET
Alex Vadukul
With the glittery spectacle now well underway inside the Met, a hot dog cart opposite the museum is doing brisk business with fashion fanatics and celebrity spotters camped outside. Mahmoud Amer, who operates the cart, said that the Met Gala is always good for business. “I never get to see who goes in, but I always hear everyone screaming,” he said as he served up a hot dog with mustard. “Tonight gets busy for me, because everyone gets hungry.”
May 1, 2023, 8:08 p.m. ET
Jessica Testa
We’ve got another press-shy steps-runner: Pete Davidson making his escape in sunglasses and a bucket hat.
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May 1, 2023, 8:06 p.m. ET
Vanessa Friedman
Serena Williams is pregnant! Thom Browne Met gala dress reveal.
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May 1, 2023, 7:23 p.m. ET
Callie Holtermann
Is there more excitement for the Met Gala than King Charles’s coronation?
In recent days, as gala season kicks into full swing, celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Kaia Gerber, Aubrey Plaza, Idris Elba and many more have been spotted at parties and events around New York City.
Last week, in advance of King Charles III’s coronation on May 6, fashion royalty and actual royalty gathered at Cipriani South Street to support the Prince’s Trust, King Charles III’s charity that helps young people access education and careers.
Marc Jacobs, Margaret Zhang, Iman, Charlotte Tilbury, as well as Crown Prince Pavlos and Crown Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, were among those who attended the gala dinner.
Over a dessert of chocolate-covered strawberries, models and designers — who suggested they were more excited about the Met Gala than the coronation — mingled with royalists.
Several attendees also shared they probably wouldn’t want to take on the role of monarch themselves.
“Way too much pressure,” Ivy Getty said.
“Leave it to them,” Kate Moss said.
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May 1, 2023, 7:10 p.m. ET
Vanessa Friedman
Christopher John Rogers pregames the Met Gala with a fashion show.
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The Met Gala exerts a gravitational pull on the fashion world in more ways than you may imagine. Not only does it shape a night of extreme dressing and crown new style stars, but like the Oscars, that other tent-pole red carpet evening, it is beginning to alter the show system itself.
Or so it appeared, anyway, when Christopher John Rogers, a rising talent in New York (he has only about seven employees, but produces clothes with the oomph of an established brand), eschewed a February slot at New York Fashion Week and chose to unveil his collection on the Saturday night before Met Monday. In part, he acknowledged in a conversation before the show, because that’s when not just the industry but the clients are in town.
If the goal is to get your work in front of the eyeballs that matter, and the eyeballs that matter are all in one place at one time, even if that time is not the usual show time … well, you do the math. Teyana Taylor, Quinta Brunson and Ashley Graham were all there.
Not that the collection itself was focused specifically on the Met Gala, or even the red carpet — though there were enough sweeping strapless gowns to satisfy any guest in search of an entrance statement. One black and white polka-dot number had a swagged skirt that seemed to bounce and sway around the body with every step, like some arch redefinition of a ball gown. Or wearable Yayoi Kusama pumpkin.
Even more interesting, however, were the quasi-evening looks that involved wide cargo pants in silk wool paired with sleeveless halter knits split open below the throat to show the breastbone, the back trailing behind like a train. They were possibly the best synthesis of recent trends involving streetwear, loungewear and the re-emergence from the pandemic that any designer has yet produced. Ditto thick fringed knits in sunshine yellow and cerulean blue, and a sheath dress in a painterly geometry that took Mr. Rogers’s signature stripes to a new level.
In a conversation before the show, which he called “To Have and to Hold, a Happy Cry,” Mr. Rogers said that when he was designing the collection, he was feeling worn down and disillusioned by fashion and the demands it places on designers, and he just wanted to block out the noise and do what he wanted. Arguably unveiling the result in time with the Met Gala places you right in the cacophonous center, but there’s no disputing the result was worth the wait.
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May 1, 2023, 6:56 p.m. ET
Ruth La Ferla
Karl Lagerfeld: Man of a Thousand Muses
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Karl Lagerfeld did not pick his muses lightly. In his quest for just the right woman to embody his ideal, he would often overlook conventional beauty in favor of something more elusive: a touch of sass, or even brash indifference.
Over the years, Mr. Lagerfeld’s choices varied in image and mood, from the seemingly chilly Catherine Deneuve (established in France as an actress and a face of Chanel well before she caught his eye) and the casually regal Amanda Harlech, the wife of a British lord, to the raffishly aristocratic Stella Tennant, whose septum piercing fascinated the designer and prompted him to sign her to appear in several ad campaigns.
There was Inès de la Fressange, anointed, some said, for her resemblance to Coco Chanel and her effortless sense of bon chic. Ms. de la Fressange, who modeled and worked throughout the 1980s as a sounding board for Mr. Lagerfeld’s ideas, famously fell out with him at the end of that decade.
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Kaiser Karl, as Mr. Lagerfeld was known, was quick to sub in the 19-year-old Claudia Schiffer after seeing a snap of her on the back of a Harley in Christian Lacroix. Young, tall and coolly blond, Ms. Schiffer was the Teutonic antithesis of the darkly Gallic Ms. de la Fressange, and her arrival signaled a playful, if short-lived, shift in tone for the house. (Ms. de la Fressange was readmitted to the designer’s inner circle about a dozen years ago.)
Mr. Lagerfeld otherwise liked his beauties with an edge, favoring those whose looks defied convention. He called Ms. Harlech, with her pale, elongated face and improbably tiny frame, “an English inspiration.” As for the beetle-browed Cara Delevingne, “She is not a standout beauty,” he once told The Guardian. Paraphrasing Francis Bacon, he added, “There is not beauty without some strangeness in the proportions.”
His muses’ status as outliers was more than skin-deep. Few of them deigned to smile for the cameras; some actively strove for a sullen, steamy hauteur. In the early 1990s, Mr. Lagerfeld cast the French singer Vanessa Paradis as a nightingale in a fragrance campaign. Wearing fishnet stockings and a bodice trimmed in feathers, she confronted the viewer with a steely eye.
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During that decade, a gamin Kate Moss also embodied the Chanel woman, chosen despite — or, as likely, because of — her undone schoolgirl look and disaffected manner. When Ms. Moss lost her contract amid a drug scandal in the early 2000s, Keira Knightley replaced her, later wearing a catsuit in a fragrance campaign and careering around Paris on a motorbike.
Kristen McMenamy, of the shaved eyebrows and grunge-y androgyny, inspired Mr. Lagerfeld during the same period. “She is modern fashion, which is not to be obsessed with beauty but with life, personality, vitality,” he once said.
In 2013, a smokey-eyed Kristen Stewart became an ambassador for Chanel, lending an element of punk to the house’s uptown tweeds, beneath which she wore nothing at all. And in 2015, Lily-Rose Depp, Ms. Paradis’s then-16-year-old daughter with Johnny Depp, inherited the role of youthful temptress, pouting in a Chanel eyewear campaign.
Some in the Lagerfeld pantheon became collaborators, others were friends. Ms. McMenamy remained close to the couturier over the years, with Mr. Lagerfeld designing her wedding dress and walking her down the aisle in 1997.
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A year later, he confected the dress for Kimora Lee Simmons’s nuptials. While still extremely young, her budding ambition and multiethnic appearance caught the eye of the designer. (“Nowadays the world is a melting pot,” she recalled in 2021, “but back then I was at the forefront of that.”) Mr. Lagerfeld awarded her a modeling contract when she was 13 and went on to mentor her.
The model-turned-designer remains grateful. “Karl made me a better model, designer, creative director and mother,” Ms. Simmons told Teen Vogue, adding, “He made me who I am.”
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May 1, 2023, 6:44 p.m. ET
Guy Trebay
‘You have to save my life’: The Paris D.J. who answered Lagerfeld’s desperate call.
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Music, as his biographer William Middleton writes in “Paradise Now: The Extraordinary Life of Karl Lagerfeld,” had been “an essential part of Karl’s life since he was a boy.” Behind the fans, the powdered hair and the elaborate wardrobe was a voluptuary who loved to get down on the dance floor.
For years the designer’s companion, Jacques de Bascher, gave form to Mr. Lagerfeld’s aural landscape, both in private and for his fashion shows. The void created by Mr. de Bascher’s death from AIDS in 1989 was filled when Mr. Lagerfeld’s right-hand man, Eric Wright, approached a club acquaintance of Mr. Lagerfeld’s, Michel Gaubert, about doing the music for a coming show.
Speaking by phone from Paris, Mr. Gaubert said he would not be attending the Met Gala. In an interview, which has been lightly edited and condensed, he recalled a lifelong musical relationship that began at a storied gay club on the Right Bank.
How did you first meet Lagerfeld?
I was working at the record store Champs Disques in 1978 and going to the club — Le Sept — almost daily. All his life Karl was obsessed with music. He would come to the store and buy a lot of records and his driver, Brahim, would pick them up afterward.
What was he buying?
Current stuff. Karl always wanted whatever was new.
Were you already D.J.ing?
I D.J.ed at the Palace from ’78 to ’81 but stopped because working at night didn’t agree with me. I had started doing shows for small brands, but never Karl, until 1989. Before that, Jacques de Bascher was doing his music.
Then de Bascher died of AIDS. And Eric Wright, the designer and Lagerfeld’s right hand, introduced you?
We’d met before, of course, at the store and the club, but it wasn’t a friendship. It was very superficial. Then one day Eric came and asked if I wanted to work with the Karl Lagerfeld brand.
Doing the music?
Doing different music. When I started, designers wanted themes tied to the collection — a “blue” theme, or a Greta Garbo or Édith Piaf. You’d have to find music according to the looks. Each song was good for about 10 models, and you’d cut it anywhere to fit the next. It wasn’t something I liked. The timing was strange. I told Karl: “I’m not going to do music like the other people do. I’d like to have one mix nonstop.” So for that first show, we had a continuous mix of Malcolm McLaren’s “House of the Blue Danube,” De La Soul, Frankie Knuckles, Soul II Soul and I don’t know what else.
It seems Lagerfeld had uncanny instincts for the mood of his time.
The best. And he liked taking risks. That was the first time a show had music not going off themes. He came up to the booth with me and listened the whole way.
Then in March of 1990, I did a show for his line again, and on the following Sunday I got a call saying: “We just listened to the music for the Chanel show tomorrow and it’s terrible. You have to save my life and do something.” I was already asleep. I’d taken a sleeping pill. Karl said Diane de Beauvau-Craon [a French princess and a pal of Mr. Lagerfeld’s] would call me. I drank a lot of coffee, put together a soundtrack, went to Diane’s apartment at 4 a.m. and played her the music while she was in her bath.
And from there you went on to do every major show of his at Chanel, Lagerfeld and Fendi for the next 30 years.
I worked with him until the end. We had this mutual feeling shows should be sensorial, because music plays a trick on your mind and transports you. It’s very emotional in a show when you can reach that place.
What shows stand out for you, in emotional terms?
The Barbie show for Chanel was an amazing collection. People look at it as one of his best. And the music was really campy, very clubby, just pure fun fashion.
But his resort show in Cuba — it was his final one, he was already on chemotherapy for prostate cancer — must have been the most emotional.
Cuba was amazing musically, in terms of the fashion and as far as human experiences go.
When Karl was growing up in Hamburg, he saw all the boats leaving and imagined they were going to Latin America. He loved Latin music and loved to dance, so it was a kind of emotional homecoming. And it was a super fun show: Chanel had 200 vintage convertibles in a caravan along the Malecón; a 1,000-foot runway; the vocalist duo Ibeyi, the twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz; 40 Voodoo drummers; and then Stella Tennant opening in a white trousers, a black jacket and a Panama hat. By the time it was over, everyone was standing and screaming and dancing with the models. I had never seen anything like that in a thousand shows.
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